Once upon a time companies didn’t even exist

Once upon a time companies didn't exist. What factors gave rise to companies? In other words, companies were created as a brilliant solution to a problem. What was that problem?

Today companies have a lot of problems. They also cause a lot of problems for other people in society. Which of those problems arose as unexpected side effects of solving the original problem that companies in general were designed to solve?

Does innovation function poorly because it was not the original purpose for companies? Was innovation added later as an afterthought? If we were to design a company from scratch to optimize for innovation, what would we do differently? What constraints would that violate?